Is happiness simply a question of mind over matter? I've long pondered this curious conundrum.

Have you ever noticed how many beloved songs suggest that we have absolutely no control over our emotions? (One common message is "If you don't love me, I'll stay in a fetal position forever.") And yet other beloved songs imply just the opposite - that controlling our emotions should be as easy as blinking. "Forget your troubles; come on, get happy! If you can't be with the one you love, honey, love the one you're with! Put on a happy face! Don't worry, be happy!"

If you truly believe in the helpless-victim songs, a good therapist may be able to help you see that you do have the ability to influence your emotions. But does this ability go as far as the happy-face songs imply? Is it possible to simply grab your emotional bootstraps and yank yourself into joy? Short answer: No. Longer answer: Kind of.

If it were possible to simply will happiness, you and I would both be in ecstasy right now, and people wouldn't be selling Ecstasy on the street. Despite our ever-growing arsenal of cheer-up drugs (legal and illegal), the brain releases happy chemicals only in limited bursts, for specific functions. If you expect all the happy chemicals all the time, you're going to be disappointed. People who try to white-knuckle themselves into perpetual glee end up singing things like "I'm dying inside, and nobody knows it but me." And when the dam of denial finally breaks, then here comes the flood of anxiety, panic, rage and despair.

So no, you can't stay happy just by insisting on it any more than you can will yourself healthy by thinking positively while running yourself down with excess alcohol, cigarettes, pain meds, comforting carbs, or sleep deprivation, for example.

Choosing to be happy, like choosing to be healthy, means committing to actions that create those states. The good news is that the actions required for happiness are surprisingly simple. Just as good weight-loss advice basically boils down to:-- eat less fattening food (simple carbs, saturated fat)-- eat more non-fattening food (produce)-- move more-- get enough sleep-- have an expert balance/optimize your hormones that regulate metabolism,happiness requires mainly two steps. They'll sound counter-intuitive, but people who really seem to have made themselves permanently happy - Jesus, the Buddha, etc. - all recommend some version of the following prescription: Allow your pain to exist. Dissolve or allow the dissolving of your pain.

For those of you who practice this and have experienced its life-long positive impact on you (and, therefore, on some of those close to you, via the ripple effect) you know how effective yet challenging it can feel.

At first, this sounds ridiculous. Feel pain? Isn't that the definition of unhappiness? Only if you define happiness as the absence of all stress. But that definition doesn't hold up. To some degree, struggle, uncertainty and discomfort are deeply compelling; otherwise, why would we watch movies that make us shriek with fear, weep with sorrow, or rise up in anger against injustice? The fact is, those feelings are part of life's richness and beauty.

Of course, actual suffering is very different from drama that takes place on the screen. And, yet, can you just watch your own experience like a movie? Actually, this is exactly what enlightened people suggest, and a rapidly growing body of evidence is proving them right. Mindfulness and meditation - simply focusing on the present moment, observing one's feelings without judgement or reaction to them in any way - have been shown to increase neural density in parts of the brain related to well-being and raise the happiness set point that determines how we typically feel.

To help prove this for yourself, you can try this exercise: search your mind for a topic you prefer not to think about - your dog's failing health, an argument with your spouse, the way a mean person treated you recently. Notice how you push away your sadness, anger, embarrassment. Accept this resistance. Let it be as it is. Paradoxically, you may feel it lessen slightly.

Now, take five minutes to let yourself feel your true emotions about the uncomfortable subject. Don't take any action - please. Just allow your emotions, and write them down: "I'm so angry {sad, nervous, embarrassed}, and right now I'm just going to let myself feel it." If you don't resist at all, the pain will come in awful but brief surges, because just like happiness hormones, the chemicals that cause misery tend to be short-lived.

According to neuroanatomists, it takes only 90 seconds for a wave of emotion to pass through us. This is the same length as a typical contraction in the final stages of childbirth. Coincidence? I think not. If you can allow enough 90-second intervals of emotional agony, the pain will eventually stop, and you'll find you've given birth to a wiser, more compassionate version of yourself.

So why, if emotional pain can be fleeting, do many of us suffer for years or a lifetime? Because we can be lying safe in bed but feeling absolutely terrified, enraged, or devastated about things that are present only in our imagination.

Many wisdom traditions teach that painful thoughts are never ultimately true. According to Buddha, tormenting thoughts are rooted in illusion. Jesus taught that God, truth and peace are all one thing: it follows that an unpeaceful thought can't be ultimately the truth.

Writer Byron Katie, a modern master of thought dissolving, was "wretchedly miserable" until she began questioning nearly all her painful thoughts with rigorous honesty. "The mind's natural condition is peace," she writes. "Then a thought enters, you believe it, and the peace seems to disappear.... When you question the thought, the story falls away. Peace is who you are without a story."

If you're so tired of hurting that you're willing to let go of your favorite painful beliefs, you can dissolve them with steely-eyed insistence on factual evidence. Whatever top scenario your mind is constantly playing back - "I'm not enough," "no one wants me," "I'll always hurt like this," or one of my old favorites, "I'll never feel safe with all the bullies in the world," - put the ego aside and test it with the pitiless honesty of a scientist. Any evidence at all that you are enough, or that anyone wants you in any meaningful way, or that there may be any pauses in your pain, or that I can learn to avoid the bullies, disproves the hypotheses. And hear this, loud and clear: If you can't know a thought is true for an absolute certainty, it doesn't pass the test. Reasonable doubt means the thought doesn't get to rule your life.

Eventually, most painful thoughts dissolve in the light of this uncompromising truth. What's left is not some happy-face ditty, but a vast, sweet, silent openness. Many emotions flow through this openness, some happy, some not. But the openness itself is who you are - and it's indescribably blissful. Dissolving pain is scary and hard but will get easierwithtime. The openness is a discipline - and it may take your whole life to really master it. But you can benefit now and then get progressively better with some practice (the right direction don't you think?). It certainly helps free me up from the entanglements of past trauma. And freedom is what true health is all about.

We can lean into every emotion we fear, let our negative value judgements quiet down (the ego). Then we can dissolve (or allow the dissolving of) our painful thoughts, and then watch how joy arises. Then, my friends, don't worry, be happy.

"You can't stop the waves, but you can learn to surf." - Jon Kabat-Zinn, PhDfounder of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)

Note on terms used:I was using the two words "happiness, joy" to mean the same thing here, for ease of communications, using the more familiar street language. When I use joy and happiness interchangeably, my word-scholar people remind me:

Happiness is about the fulfillment of your needs: oxygen, water, calories, enough warmth to function, etc.; even love is a need, for a normal early development.

Joy is about the fulfillment of our preferences: flavorings for food, better fitting clothes, more vacation/rest/fun, etc.

So, this article refers to both definitions throughout, because it refers to real life and what I see in my daily practice.